China's seals, after the Yuan Ming entered the literati seal carving period, especially in the Qing Dynasty, from cheng Yi's Hui school to the Zhejiang school of Ding Jing, its direction of taking the law is still from the ancient seal to find support, is the so-called "printing in the seal", they are near the ancient seal, facing the Han seal, the law from the ancient, this method of search, under the unremitting pursuit, because its seal carving creation to take the law data and the degree of understanding is limited, and eventually most of them will go to extreme craftsmanship, basically it can be said that until the Zhejiang school Ding Jing, its direction of taking the law is still the ancient script, Either it is the Warring States Ancient Seal Script, or the Qin G Seal Script, or the Han Miao Seal Script, left and right, can not solve the pain of having to use other people's words to create their own seal carvings, until Deng Shiru appears.
(Portrait of Deng Shiru)
First, Deng Shiru's life and temperament have taken a turn in printing
Deng Shiru, formerly known as Yan, Zi Shiru, a native of Huaining, Anhui, was born in a poor peasant family, took time out of his busy farming to study, by the age of 19, he had reached the point where he could engrave and buy rice, and by the age of 30, he had begun to sell words and prints to earn money while traveling and making friends. Deng Shiru has always lived a life of selling characters and selling Indian friends, Qianlong forty-five years, Deng Shiru met the Qianjia School of Classics master Cheng Yaotian in Yangzhou, followed him to study for half a year, this is the turning point of Deng Shiru's artistic life, before that, he studied calligraphy Li Yangbing, after this, he began to take the Fa Han Li, the body to take the Fa Han stele, the seal, he was also "Seeking India in India" before, he carved He Zhen style works, as shown below in the picture "Tai Tang Xuan Wine", he passed through Wang Guan, as shown below the "Chunjiang Society", as shown below, "Chunjiang Society", Linchang, as shown in the following figure of the "Reading and Painting Building", he also has Zhejiang style works as follows "Deng Yan's Chapter":
(Deng Shiru carved "Tai Tang Xuan Wine")
(Deng Shiru carved "Chapter of Deng Yan")
(Deng Shiru carved "Reading Painting Building")
(Deng Shiru carved "Chunjiang Society")
But forty-five years after Qianlong, Deng Shiru's seal had been fixed in his own style. Such as the following "Intention and Ancient Meeting", "The River Has a Sound, the Broken Shore is a Thousand Feet", "Pen Song and Ink Dance" and so on.
(Deng Shiru carved "Intention and Ancient Meeting")
(Deng Shiru carved "Pen Song and Ink Dance")
(Deng Shiru carved "the river has a sound, the broken shore is a thousand feet")
Obviously, there is a big difference between before and after, and in this great turning point of the forty-five years of Qianlong, what Deng Shiru learned from Cheng Yaotian is not known, but from Cheng's "Ancient Nest Seal Study Sequence", we see that Cheng Shi strongly respects a "true" character in artistic creation. Therefore, we may know that in the process of traveling around, in the continuous pursuit, Deng Shiru realized that the so-called art is to serve life, art is to express life, he began to abandon the ancient character seal method to create seal carving creative thinking, changed from his own book body into the print, completely out of the ancient seal in the Warring States script, Miao seal character seal law trapped lock, into the integration of their own spirit, education, emotion, will, aesthetic ideals of the font, obviously, with their own knife method carved their own calligraphy written out of the text, Of course, this has enabled Deng Shiru's seal carving works to enter a new realm.
Of course, there is another reason why Deng Shiru's seal came out of the book, that is, the era he was in was the era when the Zhejiang school was at its peak, and if Deng Shiru, who was rushing left and right, wanted to seek a way out of his own family, he naturally had to do the opposite, so we saw the Zhejiang faction Shangfang, Deng Shangyuan (such as "Lingshi Mountain Chief"), the characteristics of the Zhejiang faction were stable, Deng sought dynamics (such as "ten dividends become ashes"), the Zhejiang faction was a cutting knife, and Deng used a punching knife.
(Deng Shiru carved "Lingshi Mountain Chief")
(Deng Shiru "Ten dividends will turn into ashes")
Deng Shiru's breakthrough is based on his own strong self-requirements for pursuing breakthroughs, as well as his own spiritual cultivation.
When it comes to spiritual cultivation, Deng Shiru's travels and friends at all levels have broadened his horizons; his fate is uncertain, his grandfather died at the age of 19, his wife died at the age of 21, his father lost at the age of 45, his brother died at the age of 53, and he lost his wife at the age of 60; in his later years, his family was surrounded by disciples, and he finally converted to Buddhism and was accompanied by Yan; but he was not a depressed person, he traveled all his life through the mountains and rivers, his footprints all over the land of Shenzhou, he made friends all the way, he was looking for a virtuous man, he was diligent in calligraphy and printing to the point of no return, he once hand-wrote twenty copies of "Commentaries on The Interpretation of Texts", Half a year later, he came to Mount Taishan and Mount Yi several times, and every time he carefully pondered under the carved stone, he would not leave until he was "yang yang has joy" in it, it is said that he is a strong and strong person, and even "can ambush a hundred people", Denglushan once "eight days of hunger", even so, he can still "study ink bowls at night, vertical pen to make a ruler of big characters", he is a real loose boy, which is also the character background of his final position of zhenqing for three hundred years.
Second, Deng Shiru's major contribution and historical status in printing
1. True temperament: "Seeking printing in india" to "printing from books"
Deng Shiru is a model of "printing from books" in the history of Chinese seal studies, and he has become the dividing point in the history of Chinese seal engraving from "seeking printing within the seal" to "printing from the book".
In the ancient seal, the toss is from the Song people Mi Fu, the Yuan people Wu Qiu Yan, Zhao Mengfu, Ming Wenren Peng, He Zhen, Su Xuan, Zhu Jian, Wang Guanzhen to the Qing Dynasty Huizong Cheng, Zhejiang Zong Ding Jing has been along the road ahead, this kind of "India in India to seek India" the quest and creative direction is that no matter how the Indians rush left and right, they still have to borrow the format of the ancients, the words of the ancients, the seal methods of the ancients to express their emotions and interests, reflect their own lives, which is obviously limited, it is impossible to express the personality to the fullest, whether it is the smooth and mottled print surface Whether it is the punch of the knife method, the knife, whether it is the sparseness and density of the chapter, no matter how to break the seal, how to zhu Zhu, Zhu Tuo, and finally in the expression of the Indian people's thoughts and feelings, there is always a place of unhappiness, no matter how to replace the wine glass, the wine glass is always filled with the wine of the ancients, Deng Shiru is also a person trapped by it, but he has found his own way of constantly exploring, that is, to transform the seal carving creation with his own calligraphy.
Deng Shiru first learned "Er Li" in the seal book, and later took the seal of the Fa Han stele and entered the seal with the law, which solved the problem of the relatively monotonous beginning and turning of the seal book, plus he liked to use soft as a seal, and the line of pen strengthened the counter-trend, changing the glossy and delicate texture of the seal book to Mao Astringent.
Deng Shiru's later seal engraving method is the same as his seal calligraphy, such as "Meaning and Ancient Meeting" in the picture above, "The river has a sound, the broken shore is thousands of feet", and the following "Yanyi Hall" and "Folding Fangxin Thoughts".
(Deng Shiru carved "Folding Fangxin's Thoughts")
(Deng Shiru carved "YanyiTang")
The characteristics of the seal books in these works are derived from his seal calligraphy, as shown in the following figure, which is Deng Shiru's "Records of Bai's Caotang":
(Deng Shiru seal calligraphy "Bai's Caotang Record")
Putting the words written out of their own calligraphy on the printing surface of their own seals, this kind of thing, now we feel very common, but when put into Deng Shiru's era, it is groundbreaking and creative, such as the following Zhu Wenyin "Home in Longshan Fengshui", and then "Deng Shiru character stubborn" in Baiwen:
(Deng Shiru carved "Deng Shi ru character stubborn bo")
(Deng Shiru carved "Home in Longshan Fengshui")
The calligraphy group has its own print, and its own thinking is pure and free, which is also the deep reason why Deng Shiru's printing surface looks vivid and charming. There is a flamboyant personality and life experience in the print, and there is the "self" of the seal family in the print, which is the spiritual core of the seal engraving art.
"Printing in India" to "Printing from books"
2. The important theory of the rules
The reason why Deng Shiru has the status of the dividing point of Chinese seal engraving, in addition to the change from "seeking printing in india" to "printing from the book", his contribution to the seal engraving method is also outstanding.
Deng Shiru's seal engraving method is mainly embodied in two sentences:
(1) The sparse place can be sloppy, and the secret place is not ventilated
This has become the principle of seal engraving that later generations of seal engravings have embodied in their works at all times, and in Deng Shiru's works, this principle of tightness can be seen almost everywhere, such as:
(Deng Shiru carved "Jue Non-Qi Lord")
The secret places of the two words of Jue and Qi make them more dense, and the two words of non and main are more sparse, such as the above-mentioned "the river has a sound, the broken shore is a thousand feet", "The meaning and the ancient meeting" are all good works that are well-kept in the chapter. Another example:
(Deng Shiru carved "Gu Huan")
(Deng Shiru carved "Reading Ancient and Modern Books")
(Deng Shiru carved "Ishito's Farmer")
(Deng Shiru carved "Wen Shan Father")
(2) Counting white is black, and the strange is out
All the chapter contrasts in the seal engraving are the contrast of red and white, in fact, it is the contrast between light and dark, the contrast between black and white, Deng Shiru's seal carving works will arrange blank spaces of different sizes and shapes in the print, reasonable and natural, through the proportion of red and white measurement, so that the whole seal echoes into a chapter, which not only breaks the general seal of the plate stagnation, but also increases the sense of life of the whole seal. Like what:
(Deng Shiru carved "Iron Yan Mountain House Book")
(Deng Shiru carved "Deng Yan")
3. Follow-up followers and successors
Deng Shiru's seal engraving had a great influence on later generations, from "printing from the book" is the starting point of "seeking printing outside the seal", and the later Generations of Wu Rangzhi, Xu Sangeng, Zhao Zhiqian, Wu Changshuo, and Huang Shiling were deeply influenced by him. Since Deng Shiru thought, seal engravers can often write a hand of their own style of seal book, and therefore have a variety of different seal carving schools, it can be said that it is precisely because Deng Shiru created the seal carving theory of "printing from the book", and thus created the creative direction of freehand seal carving, the history of Chinese seal carving has also had a wonderful and colorful prosperity of the modern printing altar. Therefore, we say that Deng Shiru is the dividing point in the history of Chinese seal carving, and an extremely important turning point in the history of Chinese seal carving.
([Pudding said seal engraving] No. 22, part of the picture from the Internet)